Phoronix has conducted some preliminary benchmarks, comparing Debian GNU/Hurd to Debian GNU/Linux. "There was only a handful of tests that could be successfully run under Debian GNU/Hurd and in those results the numbers were generally close, though Debian GNU/Linux was running about 4% faster in some and with the MP3 encoding the Linux OS was nearly 20% faster. Debian GNU/Hurd is an interesting project but for now its support is still in shambles, the hardware support is vastly outdated, and there is also no SMP support at this time. Regardless, it will be interesting to see how Debian GNU/Hurd turns out for the 7.0 Wheezy milestone."

The Hurd Project has always interested me, it's unfortunate that it never gained any momentum. I'm curious how it would fare against darwin or QNX If it had more resources devoted to it over the past few years.